Hello Kensaku,
Welcome to the list and thank you for the nice introduction to Kanji
braille. We're certainly interested in including support for Kanji braille
in Liblouis. Your tables look well made. I don't expect it to be a lot of
work to get them to a level in which they can be included. There are three
main things that are needed in order to include a table in Liblouis:
1. It must be clear which braille code is implemented. This is done by
including the necessary comments with a description of the braille code
and/or hyperlinks to web pages that describe it. If official specifications
and braille authorities exist these should be referenced for sure. But
manuals, introduction pages, Wikipedia pages etc. are also useful.
2. The second point is related to the first: there are a number of
required metadata fields (special comments) a table must have. Just like
the first point it must make it clear which braille code is implemented,
but in machine readable form rather than plain language.
3. Tables must be backed by test data, which is used to validate the
table after every change to the table itself or to the Liblouis source
code. The test data is the contract that warrants a correct behavior of
Liblouis. The table itself should be seen as the implementation of the
contract. Ideally the tests are also constructed in such a way that it
makes them suitable as documentation about the braille code. But a
dictionary style is also permitted. You may choose how much effort you put
in the test data. Obviously the better the tests are the more comfort you
will have that Liblouis will always keep behaving correctly.
We of course assist you with all of this.
There is also this wiki page which may be helpful:
https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/wiki/How-to-contribute
Thanks,
Bert
Op do 19 aug. 2021 om 09:48 schreef Brailles Kanji <kanjibrailles@xxxxxxxxx
:
Hello,
My name is Kensaku, I'm new to this list.
I'm Japanese and I really enjoy reading in Braille, not only in Japanese
braille but also in some other languages such as English, French and Korean
braille.(This doesn't mean I'm fluent in these languages except Japanese,
though.)
Liblouis is great! It can translate a number of various languages into
braille.
I wonder if it is possible that Japanese braille tables would be included
in liblouis.
I've written some liblouis table files for Japanese Kanji braille(Kantenji
and Rokuten Kanji) for my own needs and pleasure.
I'm writing these liblouis tables at this Github page:
https://github.com/brlat/Liblouis-Japanese-kanji-braille-tables
Using above liblouis tables, I can read Yahoo Japan news, or text files
pasted from Amazon Kindle or Rakuten Kobo ebooks and so on in Kanji
brailles with my refreshable braille and PC or Mac or iPhone.
Kanji brailles are not official Japanese braille, but there some people
who use and enjoy Kanji brailles.
(I put "s" to the word braille because there are two different Kanji
braille systems, namely Kantenji and Rokuten Kanji.)
Translating Japanese text into official Japanese braille needs very
complex software, but into Kanji brailles, I think, is relatively simple,
at least forward translation.
I've been a beginner novice amateur programmer for a long long time since
MS-DOS era.(Forever writing Hello world.)
So, can someone guide and help me with the steps or tasks which I need to
do in order to develop liblouis tables for Japanese Kanji braille?
Lastly, let me introduce, quickly, Kantenji(one of two Kanji braille
systems). Refer to Wikipedia for more explanation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille_kanji
Kantenji was devised by a teacher at the Osaka School for the Blind in
1969 after several years of enthusiastic passionate study and hard work
with no computer and no Internet, defining thousands of Kanji braille
patterns corresponding its visual Kanji.
Kanji, Chinese character, is like emoji or pictogram.
There are thousands of Kanji characters and corresponding Kanji braille
characters.
So when translating, it's just one by one, same as 26 alphabet letters.
For example, Kanji's for up, middle and down are:
sign \x4e0a 45-14 上 ⠘⠉ up
sign \x4e2d 45-25 中 ⠘⠒ middle
sign \x4e0b 45-36 下 ⠘⠤ down
You can easily remember above Kanji braille, two dots' position, up,
middle or down.
Kanji's for horse, cow, sheep and pig are:
sign \x99ac 2456 馬 ⠺ horse
sign \x725b 2456-1 牛 ⠺⠈ cow
sign \x7f8a 2456-2 羊 ⠺⠐ sheep
sign \x8c5a 2456-3 豚 ⠺⠠ pig
Above Kanji braille have common 2456 dots. And if you just remember this
2456 dots represents domestic animal, it's OK you're not sure exactly what
animal it means. The context gives you a hint what it means.
The Kanji for "ocean(or sea)" are made of two parts -- left side "water"
and right side "mother"(Ocean is mother of life, or French Mere means both
mother and sea.)
These are water, mother and ocean:
sign \x6c34 123 水 ⠇ water
sign \x6bcd 45-136 母 ⠘⠥ mother
sign \x6d77 123-136 海 ⠇⠥ ocean
The vertical three dots looks like visual Kanji for water, the left side
part of the kanji for ocean.
The dots 136 is also a Hiragana braille pronounced "ha", and Japanese word
for mother is "haha". So it's easy to remember, 136 "ha" represents "haha"
mother.
There are about 200 one-cell Kanji braille like water, mother, fire,
father, eye, ear, house, tree, iron, etc.
Kanji are made of not only two parts, three, four or more.
But Kanji braille are made of two parts maximum.
For example:
Tree \x6728 126 ⠣ 木
Two trees represents woods \x6797 126-126 ⠣⠣ 林
And three, forest \x68ee 126-14 ⠣⠉ 森
Instead of three 126 dots, the dots for forest is like tree3 in braille.
And the list goes on and on and on.
My liblouis table for Kanji braille has 6349 Kanji sign definitions, and
also other Hiragana, Katakana and other symbols.
Thank you for reading my lengthy clumsy email.
Regards
Kensaku
